QuoteOn June 23, 2012, Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic man serving time for cocaine possession, was thrown into a prison shower at the Dade Correctional Institution. The water was turned up to 180 degrees — hot enough to steep tea or cook ramen noodles.

As his punishment, four corrections officers — John Fan Fan, Cornelius Thompson, Ronald Clarke, and Edwina Williams — kept Rainey in that shower for two full hours. Rainey was heard screaming, "Please take me out! I can’t take it anymore!” and kicking the shower door. Inmates said prison guards laughed at Rainey and shouted, "Is it hot enough?"

Rainey died inside that shower. He was found crumpled on the floor. When his body was pulled out, nurses said burns covered 90 percent of his body. A nurse said his body temperature was too high to register with a thermometer. And his skin fell off at the touch.

But in an unconscionable decision, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle's office announced Friday that the four guards who oversaw what amounted to a medieval-era boiling will not be charged with a crime.

They got a report that said (despite eyewitness accounts by the nurses) that there were no burns, and that Rainey's skin was coming off because of "decomposition". The family was pressured to have the body cremated.

Even with this fig leaf of cover, it's hard to believe you can lock a guy under your care in a hot shower for 2 hours, ignore his cries for help, and then find him dead, without anyone held responsible.